


The Mindscape of Dean Winchester

by ArchTroop



Series: Supernatural Meta [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Meta, mindscape analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2019-09-13 12:41:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16892814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArchTroop/pseuds/ArchTroop
Summary: OK fandom. Here is a question: How much fanfiction from Dean’s POV you have read? Written? How much from Sam’s POV?I would guess the amount of Sam’s POV’s are towering over Dean’s.Now, after this little assessment, how much of Sam’s POV’s are consistent, taking into account different writers and different story settings? Now, how about the consistency of Dean’s POV’s?Now, this might be just me, but going by my own experience, I would argue that Dean is HARD TO GET. So hard to get, that EVERY WRITER writes him differently.Sure, there are the obvious similarities - the loyalty, his unabiding love to his little brother, some of his more apparent characteristics.But by a long shot? He is a fucking chameleon. In every story, sometimes - even by same authors - he is DIFFERENT.





	The Mindscape of Dean Winchester

**Author's Note:**

> December 2018... tumblr is on a censorship spree. I realized I have some good meta there, and I really should be backing it all up. So, if any of the casual readers here like meta and thinky thoughts, I hope this finds an audience.

For comparison, I’ll bring in Sam as an example.  
  
Sam is a complex, INTERESTING character. I adore him, the way he was written, the way he registers the world, how he LIVES AND LOVES.   
He is usually this teen we know and relate to. Or that victim of circumstances, or the powerful good/evil. Usually, the protagonist. Even in fics where POV’s shift. Circumstances hit him, he navigates. He is the focus. That’s how the series was also written at first - with Sam as the main hero.  
All in all, he is somewhat consistent, from story to story, from setting to setting. His POV is RECOGNIZABLE in the text, even when he is given a different name and setting.   
Sam’s existence and mindscape have been visualized by the  **SPLIT,**  for example - when he is sharing his body with Lucifer, having a chitchat.

His fight over the series is of the good vs evil kind, two sides of a thing. Same goes for many fics - this idea is very much in the basis of his character.  
Many times it is his desire for freedom and his desire to be with his family. His struggle between independence and codependence. And so on.  
I imagine his mindscape as a collection of voices - people talking - memories of conversations, laughter and sobs. Some screams. There is a breeze, and strips of landscapes of his life on his both sides. He has some consistent, orderly system of remembering - shelving of some sort. His vision of the world wears the colors of somewhat washed off once bright hues with some denser angry colors lingering like shadows in the corners of his mind. His background music is a mixed soundtrack of whatever Dean ever inflicted on him and random radio stations. 

 **I won’t lie to you - I relate to him LESS, so he is harder for me to _get._  
** I feel like I understand Dean better.  
**AND YET,**  the way I RELATE  TO DEAN is probably completely different then the way OTHERS DO, so the way I envision him is probably absolutely different then others. So.

## Dean is a bit impossible.

He was many times associated with a  **SHATTER.**

And many of the times - he is the one doing the shattering.  
My favorite analyst of his character [(Sheila O’Malley) ](http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?tag=supernatural)described him as A Beautiful Disaster.

Something about him is so so so very wrong.   
And yet - he functions.  
In the way I see it - **Dean is a juvenile child in the body of a grown up man with the life experience of an old person.**  
He is practically a cartoon. Not meant to be.  
He is the one to seem calm on the outside but screaming inside.   
He has an unimaginable scope of imagination: He is the person to see unbelievable shapes and forms in the clouds and ink/blood splutter. The one to add random visuals and come to a conclusion. He is a genius in that way. While Sam is more methodical, as I see it, Dean is absurdly  _abstract._  
  
He would have been the best in whatever he got schooled at: be it mechanics, med-school, arts. Whatever, as long as his eyes and hands were to experience it. He is very flexible in his abilities and when it comes to absorbing information. He probably hated school - such orderly methods of study would drive him nuts. He would hate to explain himself - why the answer is X, or Y.  
While Sam’s line of thought and decision resembles a tree - one thing leads to two or more - Dean’s has loops and teleports and dead ends.   
I think his mindscape is what we would call  _fucking terrifying._  Unnavigable. Confusing. Improbable.   
Think how Sam and John do research or work a job - the paperclips and cutouts. The mess. The bookmarks. How Dean works a job? CLEANLY. He just thinks about it - and then goes and reaches for the specific book/source he needs at the moment. He moves on gut and pre-established knowledge. In all shown instances of Dean “getting a clue” about something - it was a bit like this. Even when he was minutes away from the hellhounds - there were books, but no scribblings or cutouts and all that. When the horsemen appeared - he just suddenly remembered where in the bible he read something similar to what’s going on. That is some great capacity for information storage. Remembering raw facts and processing them at the same time? How many people you know who could manage that? For the sake of fairness, Sam managed a similar trick, but the fact Dean knew where to open the book and find the specific verse still impresses me (and the PASTOR in the episode itself, mind you).

He can have whole conversations with himself - examine a task over and over and from every possible angle - all by himself, just give him the time. Of course bouncing ideas off Sam helps, but he can perfectly do it on his own.   
He thinks too fast for the casual mind to grasp - that’s how he managed to stay alive for so long.  
He comes up with the most unpredictable ideas - like ingesting phoenix ash, or whatever other example you would like to add. His chaotic mindscape is only his to navigate - which results in cool precision, terrifyingly effective. 

His mindscape is a total mess, but somehow it all holds. There is everything there, and only HE knows where to look. His lack of physical personal belongings and objects in his carnal life is being compensated by a clutter of memories in his mind.  
He remembers the most random shit, the most random assurances, the most random sightings - all for future use. Patterns, symbols (like the Blue Oyster Cult instance), scenarios, maps, definitions, names, places.   
It all pulses, together. It all works AS WE SPEAK.   
And he is there, in the eye of this shit-storm. Seems calm, but oh, what a deceiving charade that is.

His associative thinking puzzles people, that’s why so many of his jokes don’t register on strangers - many of them are inside jokes - he speaks as if everybody knows what he is talking about.   
  
If, say, you played a simple associative words game with Sam, Dean and Castiel, you would get something like that:  
  
**The word is WALL. What is your first association?**  
**Sam:**  Door. (”because you gave me a problem and I had to solve it, and that’s what usually there is in a wall. That or a window. Should have I said a window...?” - two or three paths to his thought.)   
**Castiel:** Vertical. (”because walls are vertical by definition” - rational, linear thought.)  
**Dean:**  Dinner! (”because walls end up in floors and ceilings and other walls and result in dusty corners where spiders linger and catch flies in their cobwebs who later get eaten. Dinner!” - a train of thought with multiple variables and a seemingly random outcome).  
  
(Obviously, the above is an exaggeration).

Dean doesn't notice how he skips from point A to E in a flinch of an eye. People don't usually do that, that’s why he confuses them: A thought carries a thought, and so on. He doesn't understand why people DON’T GET HIM. That’s because he is too fast - he jumps over the regular chain of thought and reaches some point that seems ridiculous to us.

His mindscape probably sounds like a Mindless Self Indulgence remix of a Metallica song, god help us all. It is high pitched noises and low growls, passing screams and some disturbing laughter with lyrical melodies wrapped in technicolor; mundane scenarios in uncanny settings - like the dining table on the ceiling, with the people around it eating and chatting idly, followed by a plot-line of a favorite movie, some random porn, a childhood memory and other random stuff.

Yes, as I see it - Dean’s mind is so fucked up - he is a bit of everything and none at all. Hence the shattering. 

That’s why, every time someone  _tries_ to get into his mindscape and WRITE him - it gets all messed up and different for each writer and each story.

He is indefinable - a mystery. He is Dean Winchester.


End file.
